1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a mobile communication terminal, and more particularly, to apparatus and methods of selecting special characters in a mobile communication terminal.
2. Background of the Related Art
Generally, as the functions of mobile communication terminals (hereinafter abbreviated “terminal” or “terminals”) develop, character input functions are more frequently used. Such functions used to be just for inputting, for example, names into a phone directory. Lately, terminals have functioned as a personal digital assistant (PDA), as a time scheduler, for Internet communication, and the like, as well as a phone directory, thereby requiring more character input. Therefore, in order to provide users with various character input functions, character inputs for various languages are required. Specially, when alphabet letters are edited in an editing mode, inputs for special characters, such as alphabet letters from the European alphabet, for example, “ë, Ë or e”, are required as well as the basic English language 26 letter alphabet.
A related art method of selecting special characters includes the steps of selecting a predetermined alphabet letter and selecting an European alphabet letter by a toggle method using a predetermined key during a special character input mode.
For instance, to input an European alphabet letter “À”, as shown in Table 1 below, a user, first pushes a key “2 (A,B,C)” on a key pad to input the alphabet letter “A”, and then pushes a predetermined key, in this case “O”, to select a special character input mode. Once the user selects the special character input mode, a plurality of European alphabet letters, which are stored as related to or associated with the alphabet letter “A”, are displayed on an LCD screen, as shown in Table 2 below. In this case, “_” indicates the location of the cursor, that is, the location where the special character is required, and two or three European alphabet letters are displayed on the screen therebelow.
TABLE 1Store phone number0123-456-7890Please input name!MOOA—
TABLE 2Store phone number0123-456-7890Please input name!MOOA—ÀÁ Â
When a plurality of the European alphabet letters are displayed, the user pushes the key “0”, known as the “toggle key”, repeatedly to search the displayed European alphabet letters. That is, when the key “0” is pushed repeatedly, the plurality of the European alphabet letters show up in the following order: ÀÁ Â. The user then selects the desired “À” among the toggled European alphabet letters.
However, this related art method of searching for special characters requires a minimum of two key inputs (2,0) and a maximum of seven key inputs (2,0,0,0,0,0,0) to select the desired European alphabet letter. That is, the user has to push the keys “2” and “0” to select “À”. Further, the user has to push the keys “2” and “0”, and then push the key “0” successively five times to select “Å”.
Moreover, the related art method of searching for special characters requires the user to push the key “0” an additional five times if the user mistakenly passes the search location of the desired European alphabet letter. Furthermore, when a particular European alphabet letter is not available, the user will only recognize this through a plurality of trial and error inputs. Consequently, the related art method of searching for special characters is inconvenient and requires a plurality of key manipulations, thereby preventing fast character input.
The above references are incorporated by reference herein where appropriate for appropriate teachings of additional or alternative details, features and/or technical background.